Games – Anime – Movies – Life

Batman Arkham Origins Review…?

This isn’t going to be a review, sorry about that, I know that the people are clamoring to know our thoughts on the new Batman game but we just don’t feel like we’re able to properly critique the game in a way that would be fair to the series. Why? Because this game isn’t worthy to stand next to the previous Arkham games.

Origins is (surprisingly) the origin story to the Arkham game series. Or so it says. Sadly the game has lots of hiccups and confusing paradoxes that make everything all a bit complicated. The game also likes to not inform the player of who these characters are and what their motives are (something that the past Arkham games were brilliant at doing) but instead just has Batman fighting these people because he’s the GOD DAMN BATMAN!

The opening to the game is a joke. Sure the short section in Blackgate prison is cool and has a few nice set pieces, but as soon as the player gets into the open world they are forced to spend the first 25 – 30 minutes flying around the world disabling broadcast towers that are stopping Batman from getting into the obviously conspicuous enemy base. This just boils down to spinning the sticks around on the controller until the code is found. Rinse and repeat for way to long and why is this even acceptable in a game like this? I’m Batman for crying out loud, not a mechanic. I want to be flying around doing cool kung-fu moves on angry thugs, not twiddle my thumbs around to fix radio towers.

When things finally get underway, the game thinks it’s a good idea to throw a joke boss fight at the player straight away by having the boss die in one hit. Why? The set up was a solid 3 minute of cutscene describing how dangerous this guy is, and he’s killed with a light tap on the face? The game raises the players hopes and then throws them down a wishing well full of hungry badgers, as from that point the game slowly nibbles away at any hopes the player has for it suddenly becoming refreshing.

The game shamelessly uses the same assists and animations from Arkham City, having around half of the map be copied and pasted directly from City. This doesn’t seem that annoying at first as the player thinks “I can revisit these areas before (insert name of bad guy) changed them”, but it soon becomes apparent that the old map was very well crafted in its ability to have the player constantly zip line and glide across the city. The old map has buildings all point in directions of important locations, meaning that the caped crusader can get around quickly, but the new areas are a jumbled mess of the same assets shuffled around to create something a little different but ultimately ruin the flow of the original map.

This isn’t just a rant pissing all over the game, but a piece asking why the developers honestly thought that this was ok. Never mind the fact the game uses the majority of the same areas as City and the same animations. Never mind that the game is just full of linear corridors that lead to groups of enemies. The real issue is that all of this happened and the developer (and publisher too) looked at this product and said “yeah that’s worth £45 no doubt”.

If you’re a fan of the Arkham series, there’s a massive chance that you’re going to be disappointed with Origins. But there may be some of you who love it, but it’s just not what the series deserves. All we can do is hope that Rocksteady’s upcoming Silver Age Batman game can show Origins how it should be done.